How to Write Titles that Make People Read Your Posts

Headlines are the most important part of your blog post. Without a good title, you can’t compel your followers on social media sites to click through to your site or entice subscribers to move their eyes down the page to read your post. That’s why you must write blog post titles that attract readers—to the headline, first, then to the content of the post.

According to CopyBlogger.com, on average, eight out of ten people read headline copy. Only two out of ten people read the rest of the post. Such statistics clearly show how much power your title wields when it comes to determining the effectiveness of your entire post.

I don’t profess to be the expert on writing blog post titles, but I’ve written more than my share. Sometimes I still struggle to get them right—and to find headlines that inspire me to write content!

Indeed, many bloggers think their blog post content should inspire the title. In fact, a headline can spark an idea for a post. If you are finding it difficult to come up with post ideas, brainstorm post titles.

4 Places to Find Blog Post Headline and Content Ideas

With all these facts in mind, I’d like to share with you some resources to help you write strong, SEO-friendly blog post headlines and come up with post ideas.

1. Blog Topic Generator | HubSpot

This free online tool asks you for three nouns related to your blog’s subject matter (or the posts you want to write) and then provides a week’s worth, or five, potential headlines. They typically need some tweaking but will get you started.

Here is step #1:

And the results…

2. Generate SEO Friendly Blog Post Titles & Kill Writer’s Block

This free online tool generates generic blog posts titles. You then add the appropriate keyword. Additionally, it will search for posts previously published online that include your keyword. You can then use these as inspiration.

3. Content Idea Generator

Just type in your keyword into this free tool, and it generates search engine optimized headlines for your topics. It doesn’t get everything right…see how it used my subject (nonfiction), but it offers some nice tips and gets you started.

4. Headline Wizard

This tool is pretty amazing, especially if you are struggling to create content ideas or need good headlines to promote products and services. Answer the four short questions on this site, and the tool generates a multitude of titles you can use for a variety of purposes.

This is the first step:

The image below is less than half of the results the Wizard provided! Notice the results include my misspelled word… :~(

Final Headline Check

Want to check that your headline truly is the best it can be? Try this final resource:

5. CoSchedule.com’s Blog Post Title Analyzer

Type or paste in what you think is your final blog post title. The results of the analyzer will amaze you…and cause you to rewrite! Here’s my first attempt at a title for this post:

And the Blog Post Analyzer results:

And here are my multiple tries to get a better score:

I went with the highest score after at least 14 attempts!

Try these tools! Let me know what you think and if your headlines attract more readers.

If you you are still having trouble because you need help finding your subjects or keywords or coming up with a blog plan, you can get help here. Or submit your name below to receive free blog plan templates.

Photo by Stuart Miles